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Beaches and Parks in Southern California: Counties Included: Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego (Experience the California Coast)

Stretching from Malibu to the Mexican border, Southern California's coast is justifiably famous, yet, as this essential guide reveals, it offers more to see and do than even its greatest fans may realize. Easy-to-use, up-to-date, and comprehensive, Beaches and Parks in Southern California is the perfect companion for all visitors--sightseers, hikers, swimmers, surfers, campers, birders, boaters, and anglers--who want to explore this magnificent shoreline. In addition to well-known beaches of soft, golden sand, it describes rocky shores and tide pools, hidden pocket beaches, historic lighthouses, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and much more.
* More than 450 site listings include beaches, public access ways, parks, campgrounds, nature preserves, world-class aquariums, and museums
* 304 color photographs and 52 color maps show recreational sites, hiking and biking trails, topography, and other features of the region and state
* Easy-to-use charts list key facilities and features, open hours, food and beverage services, wheelchair accessibility, rules about dogs, and other practical information

This is a repeat family-portrait client of mine, and one of my favorites. They're willing to pay the extra to have me drive two hours each way to take their family portraits, which makes me feel great.

Since I've recently decided to go "back to film" for my commercial work, and not keep film as something just for fun, I made a point of shooting film for this as well. I was concerned about my Bronica camera because some of the backs were misbehaving, so I chose to shoot this on my Yashica-Mat TLR instead. With digital as a back up and for candid shots/digital polaroids.

This vintage camera decided to start giving me trouble though, and jammed on the first frame of each roll (that's 1/12th of all my shots!). That's a little unnerving. I started wondering why I chose to shoot film for a client located so far away.

But then I got my REAL scare a few days later. As I was putting away some of the gear from the shoot, I picked up the camera and noticed the flash sync switch was set to 'M' instead of 'X'. X, for those of you not into the vintage stuff, is for modern electronic flashes. 'M' is for flash bulbs, which require a little head start for them to get to full brightness as they pop. So an "m' setting fires the flash and delays the shutter ever so slightly, to make the exposure happen when the flash bulb brightness peaks.

As I was not shooting with flash bulbs, this would have resulted in no flash hitting the film if the switch had been on 'M' for the shoot! No way to tell until the film was developed. I called the lab twice to have them check the negatives, and I was assured that everything looked good. Finally got the scans today, and I can rest easy now. Looks like the switch got bumped after the shoot.

strobist info: Metz Mecablitz 60 in a 35"-ish shoot through umbrella, camera left. Nikon SB-28 in a Lumiquest SoftBox III, camera right but essentially under the camera. That was for fill.

How'd I meter it? I took an incident light reading toward the sun, as I wanted the exposure on the backs of their heads to be 'normal'. That gave me a reading of f/8 at 1/100 I believe (Kodak Ektar, ISO 100). I then set my fill one stop down from my main, and dialed it in to what I thought would be f/8 at that distance. I then checked it with a flash meter…yup, f/8. Know your gear! And then finally, because you can't meter "pleasant", I chimped it with my dSLR to make sure the shadows fell where they should. Tripod, cable release, and crossed my fingers. Et voila!

In the retouch I'll get rid of those toes sticking on, lower left, and also the bird poop. And skin smoothing etc. But I thought it'd be fun to share the straight image.

Today we have an air alert due to smoke and ash from fires burning in Southern California.

Working from home today and I stepped outside to find dirty cars, ash on the street and a yellow sun.

There normally would be a large hill (Palos Verdes peninsula) easily visible over my neighbor's house in this photo.

I had to adjust the aperture and shutter timing to keep the sun from blowing out the exposure so things are just a bit dark in the photo, but not by much. The yellow/brown cast is accurate.